Women writing for theatre in New Zealand in the 1980s

Abstract

In the past two decades there has been an astounding increase in New Zealand women's drama, particularly noticeable given the dearth in early New Zealand of indigenous professional work. This local efflorescence is part of a much wider trend. The phenomenon of a burgeoning in women's writing is evident internationally. 'The new voices in theatre are a 'wave of adventurous young women playwrights....' Alison Lyssa: 'Feminist Theatre: a monologue to start discussion,' Australasian Drama Studies. Vol.2, No.2, University of Queensland, April 1984, p.37. On p.22 N.Y.Times Magazine, May 1983, was published an extensive section called 'Women Playwrights: New Voices in theatre,' in which Mel Gussow wrote about the 'wave of adventurous young women playwrights - a proliferation that is the most encouraging and auspicious aspect of the current American Theatre. After all the hard work of the seventies we are no longer being told that women can't write plays'. ( Alison Lyssa: Ibid.,p.37.). Women's writing of poetry, short stories and novels has also flourished in recent decades. In fiction 'in the decades since 1960...there has been an unprecedented increase in the quantity and diversity of women's writing' Heather Roberts: Where Did She Come From? New Zealand Women Novelists 1862-1987, Allen & Unwin New Zealand in association with Port Nicholson Press, Wellington, 1989, p.5. The upsurge in New Zealand drama however, happened later than in fiction and art. 'The emergence of a vigorous, independent New Zealand drama was a considerably later development than the "renaissance" which occurred in the media of poetry and fiction in the 1930s and 1940s-1950s respectively. New Zealand drama is not seen to have taken off in the same way until the late 1950s,' Rachel Barrowman: A Popular vision - Arts and the Left in New Zealand 1930-1950, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1991, p.221. and women's drama in the 1980s. Dramatic artists often follow on after the political event. 'Almost always they use the form of the epic just gone to come to terms with the new' Bruce Mason: New Zealand Drama - A parade of forms and a history, New Zealand University Press, Wellington, 1973, p.15. This makes sense in that many feminist playwrights of the 1980s dramatised issues brought to light in the 1970s' epic years of women's liberation. Although in certain circumstances there is no longer the gap between the political event and the dramatisation that has been customary in the more conservative traditional theatre Phil Mann: interview Colleen Cleary, Wellington, 13 June 1991.